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Amnesty Int'l Condemns Illegal Transfer of Afghan POWs
According to Amnesty International and news reports, the United States is illegally transporting Afghan prisoners of war to another country, namely Cuba, shackling, drugging and hooding the prisoners, also in violation of international law, in transporting these prisoners to Cuba, where they will be imprisoned under conditions that violate international law and perhaps tried by military tribunals, after living in conditions of torture, both of which violate international law.
According to Amnesty International and news reports, the United States is illegally transporting Afghan prisoners of war to another country, namely Cuba, shackling, drugging and hooding the prisoners, also in violation of international law, when transporting these prisoners to Cuba, where they will be imprisoned under conditions that violate international law and perhaps tried by military tribunals, after living in conditions of torture, both of which violate international law.
As the British Times reports on 1/11/02 in an article by Roland Watson & Katy Kay, at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002018584,00.html, the United States plans to hold these prisoners of war in illegal conditions at its military base, Guantanamo:
"At Guantanamo Bay, the base leased by the US from Cuba for more than 100 years, the prisoners will be held in hastily constructed open-air cages.
Apart from concrete floors and a roof covering, the chain-link “cells” will be open at the sides. “When it rains, they will get wet,” a US military official on the island said."
Th San Francisco Chronicle, 1/10/02 at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/01/10/international0934EST0523.DTL
provides this horrifying picture of US war crimes at Guantanamo:
"There, prisoners will be isolated in individual, open-air fenced cells with metal roofs. They will sleep on mats under halogen floodlights. They could get wet from rain, but officials say they will be treated humanely."
The officials are obviously insane when they state that this treatment is "humane."
Only a profoundly sick, fascist government would treat anyone like this, and that is what the US government is. Every action George "War" Bush is taking would make Hitler proud, whether it be Reichstag Fires such as the bombings of September 11, the blood for oil wars perpetrated in Afghanistan so Unocal can build an oil pipeline and the many other blood for oil wars openly and proudly planned, the attack on civil liberties and the promotion of racism and xenophobia (anti-immigrant scapegoating) at home, and most importantly, the vicious attacks on labor right here at home. These attacks are both against labor unions and union organizing and in the form of cutbacks to all social services, for we cannot have both guns and butter, and the capitalist class is all about promoting guns instead of butter so as to make themselves richer, in accordance with the primary law of capitalism: Maximization of profits for the capitalist class.
Amnesty International has issued a letter to War Secretary Rumsfield, itemizing all the US violations of international law, at:
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/AMR510052002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\USA
Amnesty International's press release condemning the hooding and drugging is as follows: From:
http://web.amnesty.org/web/news.nsf/WebAll/B0FAC2CB953A35B580256B3D00604D17?OpenDocument
Afghanistan/USA: Prisoners must be treated humanely
AI Index: AMR 51/004/2002
Publish date: 10/01/2002
All those in US custody following the military operations in Afghanistan must be treated humanely, with full respect for international standards, Amnesty International said today.
"Reports that al-Qaeda and Taleban prisoners due to be transferred to a US base in Guantánamo, Cuba, may be drugged, hooded and shackled during the 20 hour transportation flight are worrying".
According to international standards restraints may be used when strictly necessary as a precaution against escape, damage or injury. However, if restraints are necessary, they must be applied humanely, with adequate opportunity for the prisoner to move limbs, use the bathroom and eat and drink.
Furthermore, sedating prisoners for other than medical purposes would be in breach of international standards. According to Principle 5 of the UN Principles of Medical Ethics any administration of sedative drugs should be in accordance with purely medical criteria.
In a letter to the authorities earlier this week Amnesty International expressed concern at photos showing detainees in Afghanistan hooded while under guard by US marines. Hooding suspects in detention may violate international standards prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. The standards emphasize that the term "cruel, inhuman or degrading" covers mental as well as physical abuse, including holding detainees in conditions that deprive them, even temporarily, of the use of any of their natural senses such as sight or hearing or awareness of time or place. The hooding or blindfolding of suspects during interrogation also violates international standards.
"Housing detainees in Guantánamo in 6x8 feet chain-link 'cages' at least partially open to the elements would also fall below minimum standards for humane treatment," the organization said. Standards for the treatment of detainees require adequate shelter from the elements. The cage size would be less than that considered acceptable under US standards for ordinary prisoners confined to cells.
As the British Times reports on 1/11/02 in an article by Roland Watson & Katy Kay, at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002018584,00.html, the United States plans to hold these prisoners of war in illegal conditions at its military base, Guantanamo:
"At Guantanamo Bay, the base leased by the US from Cuba for more than 100 years, the prisoners will be held in hastily constructed open-air cages.
Apart from concrete floors and a roof covering, the chain-link “cells” will be open at the sides. “When it rains, they will get wet,” a US military official on the island said."
Th San Francisco Chronicle, 1/10/02 at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/01/10/international0934EST0523.DTL
provides this horrifying picture of US war crimes at Guantanamo:
"There, prisoners will be isolated in individual, open-air fenced cells with metal roofs. They will sleep on mats under halogen floodlights. They could get wet from rain, but officials say they will be treated humanely."
The officials are obviously insane when they state that this treatment is "humane."
Only a profoundly sick, fascist government would treat anyone like this, and that is what the US government is. Every action George "War" Bush is taking would make Hitler proud, whether it be Reichstag Fires such as the bombings of September 11, the blood for oil wars perpetrated in Afghanistan so Unocal can build an oil pipeline and the many other blood for oil wars openly and proudly planned, the attack on civil liberties and the promotion of racism and xenophobia (anti-immigrant scapegoating) at home, and most importantly, the vicious attacks on labor right here at home. These attacks are both against labor unions and union organizing and in the form of cutbacks to all social services, for we cannot have both guns and butter, and the capitalist class is all about promoting guns instead of butter so as to make themselves richer, in accordance with the primary law of capitalism: Maximization of profits for the capitalist class.
Amnesty International has issued a letter to War Secretary Rumsfield, itemizing all the US violations of international law, at:
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/AMR510052002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\USA
Amnesty International's press release condemning the hooding and drugging is as follows: From:
http://web.amnesty.org/web/news.nsf/WebAll/B0FAC2CB953A35B580256B3D00604D17?OpenDocument
Afghanistan/USA: Prisoners must be treated humanely
AI Index: AMR 51/004/2002
Publish date: 10/01/2002
All those in US custody following the military operations in Afghanistan must be treated humanely, with full respect for international standards, Amnesty International said today.
"Reports that al-Qaeda and Taleban prisoners due to be transferred to a US base in Guantánamo, Cuba, may be drugged, hooded and shackled during the 20 hour transportation flight are worrying".
According to international standards restraints may be used when strictly necessary as a precaution against escape, damage or injury. However, if restraints are necessary, they must be applied humanely, with adequate opportunity for the prisoner to move limbs, use the bathroom and eat and drink.
Furthermore, sedating prisoners for other than medical purposes would be in breach of international standards. According to Principle 5 of the UN Principles of Medical Ethics any administration of sedative drugs should be in accordance with purely medical criteria.
In a letter to the authorities earlier this week Amnesty International expressed concern at photos showing detainees in Afghanistan hooded while under guard by US marines. Hooding suspects in detention may violate international standards prohibiting "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. The standards emphasize that the term "cruel, inhuman or degrading" covers mental as well as physical abuse, including holding detainees in conditions that deprive them, even temporarily, of the use of any of their natural senses such as sight or hearing or awareness of time or place. The hooding or blindfolding of suspects during interrogation also violates international standards.
"Housing detainees in Guantánamo in 6x8 feet chain-link 'cages' at least partially open to the elements would also fall below minimum standards for humane treatment," the organization said. Standards for the treatment of detainees require adequate shelter from the elements. The cage size would be less than that considered acceptable under US standards for ordinary prisoners confined to cells.
For more information:
http://www.amnesty.org
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As for the fact that the cells their in don't meet US prison standards - so the f*ck what?
They aren't US prisoners, they're not even POWs under terms of the Geneva Convention.
As the US no doubt wants to question them, I'm sure they'll be tended to.
The point is, everyday the illusion of a benevolent U.S. empire is crumbling, and they are being exposed for the mobster-butchers that they are.
Keep this in mind: people who are detained by the U.S. government are not necessarily al-Qaeda fighters. Who knows who they are? Innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply here. The only common thing these people share is that they were captured by invading U.S. forces.
And your beloved government is a torturing butcher mobster state. As Bush pockets money stolen from unemployed Enron workers, he is ordering the murderous death of thousands of innocent Afghans, endorsing torture, and plunging the world into a global war which could easily result in nuclear holocaust.
Have a nice day.
Apart from the fact that the US government never recognized the Taliban as the legitimate govenment of Afghanistan (only 3 countries ever did I think), the Taliban soldiers wore no uniforms, have no 'dog-tags', did not use marked vehicles, etc.
Prisoners are entitled to a hearing before a tribunal as to their status however. Whether that has been done or not already, I don't know.
It's also been reported that some of the prisoners are being treated for tuberculosis. Since it would have been easy enough to shoot these people in Afghanistan - I would imagine the US has every interest in keeping them alive.
I recall too, that the Taliban promised to drag American soldier's bodies through the streets back when the war started.
All in all, these guys are pretty lucky. I'd be tempted to leave them in a room full of Afghan women.
From the British Observer, 1/13/02, "American cant" by Peter Beaumont, at:
http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,631883,00.html
Quotable legal arguments:
"Let's start with the Geneva Conventions. Not the obvious stuff like the proscriptions on summary executions (witnessed across the country as the Taliban fell), or torture (see above), or the humiliating and degrading treatment (parading prisoners for the international media), but the niggly details of legal process. "
"Details like the proscription on the handing-over of prisoners of war to a third party that is not a party to the war, which America insists implausibly to the International Committee for the Red Cross that it is not; in other words, the US claims that it is merely assisting the anti-Taliban forces rather than prosecuting a war. "
"Or the little detail that insists that those prisoners must be tried by regularly constituted courts, not military tribunals constituted under emergency powers."
"If they are combatants - and prisoners of war - acting under orders, then, as the US Supreme Court's ex parte Quirin ruling declared in 1942 in the case of a group of German saboteurs seized in America in the Second World War, they 'are subject [only] to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces'. "
"But then, say Mr Bush's advisers, including Attorney-General John Ashcroft and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, these aren't prisoners of war. These are men who fought without uniforms. They bore their weapons in secret for a criminal organisation without a formal legal command. They are criminals, they argue, 'unlawful combatants', and therefore not covered by the protections of the Geneva Conventions."
"And there lies the source of the Bush administration's greatest contortions. For if the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay are not covered by the 'laws of war', then they are ordinary criminals. And the rights of ordinary - and even extraordinary - criminals are guaranteed by the US Constitution."
"The Sixth Amendment, in case Mr Bush has forgotten, insists that in 'all criminal prosecutions' in the United States inalienable rights apply. Those rights include the right to a jury trial, a right underlined by case law in the US Supreme Court that insists that if the civilian courts are open and functioning then the armed forces cannot convene a military tribunal to try offences that fall within the jurisdiction of civilian courts. "
"So if the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay are not criminals or combatants, what are they?"
You write too that in 'all criminal prosecutions' in the United States inalienable rights apply' - that's no doubt precisely why they weren't taken to the US - but to a base in Cuba.
That's good enough for Patriot Pat because he doesn't even like what's good about this country. Things like liberty and the promise of personal security. No, he likes the torture of prisoners, criminalization of social movements on the other side of the world and the general disdain the american right has for the very concept of international law.
Pat gets the world he deserves. I'm just sorry for the rest of us.
Maybe you missed the videos by the guy in the cave who is looking to kill every one of us. I live in NY - it certainly caught my attention.
Maybe you also missed the video from Singapore, or the one on Australia Broadcast Television with the terrorist training?
No matter. Thankfully - the voices on this bulletin board are a subset of the already-decimated 'loony left' . In my nearly 4 decades, I've never seen the country more united.
Ironically, people like you get saved in the process, but that's the price we pay.
As for these guys in Cuba - in a perfect world, I would leave them in a room with WTC family, and a group of Afghan women - but apparently they serve a purpose alive for a while. I readsome are even being treated for tuburculosis.
I can wait.
Phony humanitarians like you have had your day. It won't last. Mark my words.
PBK
Bin Laden and company are dicks. No one's disputing that, we're just reckognizing the company he keeps.
Unless you prove otherwise, I count you as part of that crowd, Pat.
There are also many americans who a few years ago when the speculative bubble was inflating couldn't care less about unity and it's natural corollary -- solidarity -- but now, when the system is in crisis, are prancing around saying we're all in it together. But it isn't true -- America is a massively class-divided society and militant flag-wavers like you can't smooth that over for much longer.
PK